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Global
Economic Crisis, Healthcare, U.S. Foreign Policy
and Resistance to American Empire
By Noam Chomsky
Source: Democracy Now!
April 14, 2009
AMY GOODMAN: Today, a conversation with one of
the most important dissident intellectuals of our time, Noam Chomsky,
on the global economic crisis, healthcare, the media, US foreign
policy, the expanding wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and resistance
to American empire. Noam Chomsky is a world-renowned linguist, philosopher,
social critic, and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
Among his many books over the past few decades are Hegemony or Survival:
America's Quest for Global Dominance, Manufacturing Consent: The
Political Economy of the Mass Media, Profit over People: Neoliberalism
and Global Order, and Human Rights and American Foreign Policy.
There's a great collection of his work, just out now, edited by
Anthony Arnove, called The Essential Chomsky.
I spoke to Noam Chomsky earlier this month when we were on the road
in Boston. This is Part II of our conversation. I began by asking
him to talk about the current economic meltdown.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, let's start with G20. If you
look at the Financial Times, the world's major business journal,
the day before the G20 meeting, they had a section on it, and they
pointed out, I think correctly, that the main purpose is to present
a picture of harmony and agreement. It doesn't matter what you do,
but make it look as if we're all together on this. Now, there are
sharp splits about how to approach the issue, but you have to make
it look as if we're all together. That's pretty much what happened.
Now, in the communiqué, which you read before, the crucial
word was "voluntary." So, the countries there are supposed
to voluntarily choose to do x, y and z. Well, that means we couldn't
make an agreement. So we'll call it voluntary agreement.
Now, there was one point on which they agreed: a sharp recapitalization
of the International Monetary Fund; pour a lot of money into the
IMF. That's a pretty dubious move. I mean, the record of the IMF
has—the IMF is more or less a branch of the US Treasury, even
though it has a European director. Its past role has been extremely
destructive. In fact, its American US executive director captured
its role when she described it as "the credit community's enforcer,"
meaning if a third world dictator incurs a huge debt—people
didn't, but the dictator did; say, Suharto in Indonesia—and
then the debt defaults, the lenders, who have made plenty of money
because it was a risky loan so they get high interest and so on,
they have to be protected, meaning not by the dictator, by the people
of Indonesia, who are subjected to harsh structural adjustment programs
so that they can pay back the debt, which they didn't incur, so
that we can be compensated, rich Westerners can be compensated.
So that's the IMF, the credit community's enforcer, a very destructive
role in the third world. Now it's to be recapitalized.
Now, there's discussion about this, and it's interesting. You can
read it in the financial pages. The supporters of the recapitalization
say, "Well, the IMF has changed its spots. It's going to be
different from now on. We realize that it had this terrible role,
but now it's going to be different." Well, is there any reason
to believe it will be different? In fact, if you look today, it's
quite striking to see the advice that the Western powers are following,
the programs that they're following, and compare them to the instructions
given to the third world.
So, say, take Indonesia again. Indonesia had a huge financial crisis
about ten years ago, and the instructions were the standard ones:
"Here is what you have to do. First, pay off your debts to
us. Second, privatize, so that we can then pick up your assets on
the cheap. Third, raise interest rates to slow down the economy
and force the population to suffer, you know, to pay us back."
Those are the regular instructions the IMF is still giving them.
What do we do? Exactly the opposite. We forget about the debt, let
it explode. We reduce interest rates to zero to stimulate the economy.
We pour money into the economy to get even bigger debts. We don't
privatize; we nationalize, except we don't call it nationalization.
We give it some other name, like "bailout" or something.
It's essentially nationalization without control. So we pour money
into the institutions. We lectured the third world that they must
accept free trade, though we accept protectionism.
Take the "too big to fail" principle, which the House
committee is discussing today. But what does "too big to fail"
mean? "Too big to fail" is an insurance policy. It's a
government insurance policy. Government means the public pays, which
says, "You can take huge risks and make plenty of profit, and
if anything goes wrong, we'll bail you out." That's "too
big to fail." Well, that's extreme protectionism. It gives
US corporations like Citigroup an enormous advantage over others,
like any other kind of protection.
But we don't allow the third world to do that. I mean, they've got
to privatize, so that we can pick up their assets. Now, these are
happening side by side. Now, here's the instructions for you, the
poor people; here's the policies for us, the rich people. Exactly
the opposite. Is there any reason to think the IMF is going to change
it?
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think President Obama is any
different than President Bush when it comes to the economy? And
if you were in the Congress, would you have voted for the bailouts
and the stimulus packages?
NOAM CHOMSKY: He's different. I mean, first of
all, there's a rhetorical difference. But we have to distinguish
the first and the second Bush terms. They were different. I mean,
the first Bush term was so arrogant and abrasive and militaristic
and dismissive of everyone that they offended, they antagonized
even allies, close allies, and US prestige in the world plummeted
to zero. Now, the second Bush administration was more—moved
more toward the center in that respect, not entirely, but more,
so some of the worst offenders, like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and others,
were thrown out. I mean, they couldn't throw out Dick Cheney, because
he was the administration, so they couldn't get rid of him. He stayed,
but the others, a lot of them, left. And they moved towards a somewhat
more normal position.
And Obama is carrying that forward. He's a centrist Democrat. He
never really pretended to be anything else. And he's moving towards
a kind of a centrist position. He's very popular in Europe, not
so much because of him, but because he's not Bush. So there is the
kind of rhetoric that the European leaders and, in fact, the European
population tend to accept. In fact, you know, even in the Middle
East, where you'd think people would know better, they accept the
illusions. And they are illusions, because there's nothing to back
them up. So, yes, he is different from Bush.
Same—on the economy, well, you know, the current Obama-Geithner
plan is not very different from the Bush-Paulson plan. I mean, somewhat
different, but circumstances have changed. So, of course, it's somewhat
different. But it's still based on the principle that we have to—somehow,
the taxpayer has to rescue the institutions intact. They have to
remain intact, including the people who, you know, destroyed the
economy. In fact, they are the ones who Obama picked to fix it up.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Like Larry Summers, for example,
who is now his chief economic adviser. I mean, he was Secretary
of Treasury under Bill Clinton. His great achievement was to prevent
Congress from regulating derivatives, exotic financial instruments.
Well, that's one of the main factors that led to the crisis.
His kind of senior adviser, one of the first, was Robert Rubin,
who was Secretary of Treasury right before Summers. His main achievement—many
achievements, like what he did to Indonesia and the third world,
but here, his main achievement was to lead the way to revoke the
Glass-Steagall legislation from the New Deal, which protected commercial
banks from risky investments. It broke down those barriers. Immediately
after having done this, he left the government, joined Citigroup
as a director, and they began to make huge profits, including him,
from picking up insurance companies and so on and making very risky
loans, relying on the "too big to fail" doctrine, meaning
if we get in trouble, the taxpayer will bail us out, which is just
what's happening, taxpayers now pouring tens of billions of dollars
into rescuing Citigroup.
Well, these are the advisers who were supposed to fix up the system.
Tim Geithner was right in the middle of this. He was head of the
New York Federal Reserve, so, yes, he was supervising these actions.
Now, you know, you can argue about whether they're doing the right
thing or the wrong thing, but are these the people who should be
fixing up the system?
Actually, the business press just had some interesting things to
say about this. Bloomberg News, you know, main business press, had
an article in which they reviewed the records of the people who
Obama invited to his economic summit. I think it must have been
last November or December. They just reviewed the record. I think
there were a couple dozen of them. People on the—you know,
people like, say, Stiglitz, Krugman, they were never even allowed
close to it, let alone anyone from the left or labor and so on,
given token representation. So they went through the records, and
they concluded that these people should not be invited to fix up
the economy. Most of them should be getting subpoenas because of
their record of accounting fraud, malpractice and so on, and helping
bring about the current crisis.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Noam Chomsky. We'll continue
the conversation in a minute. If you'd like a copy of today's show,
you can go to our website at democracynow.org. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We return now to my conversation with
Noam Chomsky about the economic crisis and how the Obama administration
is handling it.
AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think Obama chose to surround
himself?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Because those are his beliefs. I
mean, his support comes from the—his constituency is basically
the financial institutions. Just take a look at the funding for
his campaign. I mean, the final figures haven't come out, but we
have preliminary figures, and it seems to be mostly financial institutions.
I mean, the financial institutions preferred him to McCain. They
are the main funders for both—you know, I mean, core funders
for both parties, but considerably more to Obama than McCain.
You can learn a lot from campaign contributions. In fact, one of
the best predictors of policy around is Thomas Ferguson's investment
theory of politics, as he calls it—very outstanding political
economist—which essentially—I mean, to say it in a sentence,
he describes elections as occasions in which groups of investors
coalesce and invest to control the state. And he takes a look at
the formation of campaign contributors, and it gives you a surprisingly
good prediction of what policies are going to be. It goes back a
century, New Deal and so on. So, yeah, it can predict pretty well
what Obama is going to do. There's nothing surprising about this.
It's the norm in what's called political democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you have let Citibank, would
you have let Citigroup, would do have let the AIG fail?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, there are other possibilities. So,
the government could just take over the viable parts. And parts
of them are functioning; parts are dysfunctional, like the toxic—what
they call the toxic asset parts, you know, the financial manipulations.
Well, one thing you could do, which has been suggested by a number
of economists like Dean Baker, just take over the good parts, essentially
nationalize them, put them under public control. And "nationalize"
means public control, at least if you have a democracy. Not here,
but if you had a functioning democracy, it would mean let them be
under public control, and the parts that are responsible for the
huge losses, just let them go off by themselves. In fact, that would
be the way of taking care of the AIG bonuses that everyone's screaming
about. In fact, as Baker pointed out, just spin off the parts that
were involved in financial manipulations and caused the crisis,
let them go bankrupt and let the executives try to get the bonuses
from a bankrupt firm, OK, with no legislation necessary. That's
what should be done with Citigroup.
And in fact, it's interesting, it's kind of happening. You know,
after the breakdown of Glass-Steagall, they did bring in—they
made use of it, under Rubin's direction, among others, to take—bring
in insurance companies and other risky investors. Now they're divesting
them. And they're going in the direction of becoming, you know,
commercial bank.
Now, incidentally, this is not the first time this has happened.
Paul Volcker is on the news today, you know, saying, "Let's
slow down," and so on. Well, he's the one who, under Reagan,
who helped bail out Citigroup last time they crashed. At that time
they were Citibank. They had followed World Bank and IMF instructions
and lent huge amounts of money to Latin America and were assured
by the World Bank that it's all fine, you know, markets will take
care of it, etc. Well, in a crash, Paul Volcker came in. He raised
interest rates very sharply. Third world countries, whose payments
are tied to US interest rates, couldn't pay their debts. The IMF
moved in, took care of it, and essentially recapitalized Citibank.
That's the way the system works: you make risky loans, you make
a lot of money, and if you get into trouble, we're here to bail
you out, namely the taxpayer.
AMY GOODMAN: And how do the Republicans differ
from the Democrats in this? What do you make of—do you see
it as just a minor footnote that Republicans, or some of the governors
like Palin, like Jindal—
NOAM CHOMSKY: There's a difference.
AMY GOODMAN: —are saying they're not going
to take stimulus money?
NOAM CHOMSKY: There's a difference. I mean, we
basically are a kind of a one-party state. I think C. Wright Mills
must have pointed this out fifty years ago. It's a business party,
but it has factions—Democrats and Republicans—and they're
different. They have somewhat different constituencies and different
policies. And if you look over the years, the population has—the
majority of the population has tended to make out better under Democrats
than Republicans; the very wealthy have tended to make out better
under Republicans than Democrats. So they're business parties, but
they're somewhat different, and the differences can have an effect.
However, fundamentally, they're pretty much along the same lines.
So take, say, the current financial crisis. Actually, it began under
Carter. The late Carter administration is the one that began—was
pushing for financialization of the economy, you know, huge growth
of speculative financial capital, deregulation, and so on. Reagan
carried it much further, and Clinton continued it. And then, with
Bush, it kind of went off the rails.
So there are differences, but differences within a pretty narrow
spectrum. And anyone who's a little off the spectrum, like Nobel
laureates in economics who are a couple of millimeters off the spectrum,
they're basically on the outside. You can interview them, but they
don't show up at the economic summit.
AMY GOODMAN: How does the global economy and our
own economy relate to the issue of war and US foreign policy?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, actually, you had a pretty
good interview with Joseph Stiglitz about that a couple of months
ago, in which he discussed the relationship of—he was talking
about the Iraq war. And as you'll recall, he pointed out correctly
that the Iraq war, which, first of all, is going to cost trillions
of dollars, also had the effect of sharply increasing the price
of oil, predictably. And as he pointed out, we could sort of paper
that over for a while by a housing bubble, so there was a huge housing
bubble which anyone with eyes open could see. I mean, for a century,
housing prices had sort of tracked the economy, GDP; then, all of
a sudden, they shot way beyond the trend line, which means there's
a bubble, and it's going to burst, and you get into trouble. But
the housing bubble, which was supervised by Alan Greenspan and with
the Democrats—actually, it started under Clinton—it
replaced the tech bubble under Clinton, and it gave an illusion
of prosperity, which—so you didn't see the effects of the
rise in oil prices, which went very high. But if you trace all the
connections, yes, there's a clear connection, as he pointed out,
between the war and the economic crisis.
And in fact, it's deeper than that. The US is just in a class by
itself in military expenses. It basically matches the rest of the
world, and it's far more advanced. Well, that's drawn from somewhere.
You know, that's money that's not being used to develop the economy.
Now, in fact, you have to add a footnote here, because part of the
very high level of US violation of free trade principles is that
the economy itself is based on military spending to a substantial
extent. So the modern information revolution—computers, the
internet, fancy software and so on—most of that comes straight
out of the Pentagon. My own university, MIT, was one of the places
where all of this was developed under Pentagon contracts in the
1950s and the 1960s.
In fact, that's another critical part of the way the economy works.
The public pays the costs and takes the risk of economic development,
and if anything works, maybe decades later, it's handed over to
private enterprise to make the profits. And that's a core element
of the economy. Of course, we don't permit the third world to do
that. That's considered a violation of free trade when they do it.
But it's the way our economy works. And it's kind of complementary
to the "too big to fail" doctrine of protectionism for
financial institutions. But the general—we do not have a capitalist
economy. We have kind of a state capitalist economy in which the
public has a role: pay the costs, take the risks, bail out if they
get into trouble. And the private sector has a role: make profit,
and then turn to the public if you get into trouble.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you extend that to healthcare?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, healthcare is a dramatic case.
I mean, for decades, the healthcare issue has been right at the
top of domestic concerns, for very good reasons. The US has the
most dysfunctional healthcare system in the industrial world, has
about twice the per capita costs and some of the worst outcomes.
It's also the only privatized system. And if you look closely, those
two things are related. And the privatized system is highly inefficient:
a huge amount of administration, bureaucracy, supervision, you know,
all kinds of things. It's been studied pretty carefully.
Now, the public has had an opinion about this for decades. A considerable
majority want a national healthcare system, like other industrial
countries have. They usually say a Canadian-style system, not because
Canada is the best, but at least you know that Canada exists. Nobody
says an Australian-style system, which is much better, because who
knows anything about that? But something like what's sometimes called
Medicare Plus, like extend Medicare to the population.
Well, up until—it's interesting. Up until the year 2004, that
idea was described, for example, by the New York Times as politically
impossible and lacking political support. So, maybe the public wants
it, but that's not what counts as political support. The financial
institutions are opposed, the pharmaceutical institutions are opposed,
so it's not—no political support. Well, in 2008, for the first
time, the Democratic candidates—first Edwards, then the others—began
to move in the direction of what the public has wanted, not there,
but in that direction.
So what happened between 2004 and 2008? Well, public opinion didn't
change. It's been this way for decades. What changed is that manufacturing
industry, a big sector of the economy, has recognized that it's
being severely harmed by the highly inefficient privatized health
system. So, General Motors said that it costs them over a thousand
dollars more to produce a car in Detroit than across the border
in Windsor, Canada. And, you know, when manufacturing industry becomes
concerned, then things become politically possible, and they begin
to have political support. So, yes, in 2008, there's some discussion
of it.
Now, you know, this is very revealing insight into how American
democracy functions and what is meant by the term "political
support" and "politically possible." Again, this
should be headlines. Will a proposal come that approaches what the
public wants? Well, we're already getting the backlash, strong backlash.
And what private healthcare systems are claiming is that this is
unfair. The government is so much more efficient that they'll be
driven—there's no level playing field if the government gets
into it, which is true.
AMY GOODMAN: If you had a public and a private
plan.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: If it were like Medicare.
NOAM CHOMSKY: If you had them side by side—
AMY GOODMAN: Most people go for Medicare—
NOAM CHOMSKY: —they will.
AMY GOODMAN: —but if you wanted to go for a private
plan, you could.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, if you could. But they're not—they
say, "Well, we can't compete." For good reasons. I mean,
in every country except—industrial country except the United
States, the government uses its massive purchasing power to negotiate
drug prices. That's one of the reasons prices are so much higher
in the United States than in other countries. Well, they could—the
Pentagon can use purchasing power to negotiate prices for, you know,
paper clips or something, but, by law, the government is not permitted
to do that in the case of healthcare. Well, if you had Medicare
Plus, they would, and that would drive down drug prices, and the
private industries can't compete.
AMY GOODMAN: FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting,
did a study of the week leading up to the White House healthcare
summit of the networks and how they were covering single payer,
the issue of like Medicare Plus, and I think they found that absolutely—that
almost—there was almost no representation in the media of
a single-payer advocate—
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —and almost the only mention was someone
blasting single payer.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, yeah. That's because it has
no political support; only the majority of the public. It's the
same as the media commentary in 2004. In fact, if you take a look
back at the end of the last electoral campaign, Kerry-Bush campaign,
in October 2004, right before the election, there was a debate on
domestic issues. I think it was maybe October 28th or so. Just take
a look—read the New York Times report of it the next day.
It was very dramatic. It said Kerry never brought up the idea of
any government involvement in healthcare, not, you know, Medicare
Plus, but any government involvement, because it is not politically
possible and lacks political support—just the population.
Well, that—
AMY GOODMAN: What studies show you the population
wants this?
NOAM CHOMSKY: I mean, there's been poll after poll,
goes back, in fact—
AMY GOODMAN: So, what do you think is going to
break through?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, it's a problem of the general
dysfunction of formal democracy. I mean, there's a very substantial
gap between public opinion and public policy on a host of major
issues. And on many of these issues, both parties are well to the
right of the public, international and domestic.
Incidentally, that's one reason why elections are run the way they
are. Elections are run as marketing extravaganzas, and that's not
kept secret. So the advertising industry gives an award every year
for best marketing campaign of the year. For 2008, they gave it
to Obama. He beat out, I think, Apple Computer. And if you look
at the comments of financial—of advertising executives, PR
executives, they were euphoric. In fact, they said—you can
read it in the Financial Times, business press—they said,
you know, "We've been marketing candidates like commodities
ever since Reagan, but this is the best we've ever done. It's going
to change the atmosphere in corporate boardrooms. We have a new
style of selling things, you know, the Obama style, you know, soaring
rhetoric, hope and change, and so on." Yeah, that's true.
And if you look at the campaigns themselves, they're designed essentially
by the advertising industry to sell the commodity—it happens
to be a candidate—and they're pretty carefully designed so
that you marginalize issues and you focus on what are called "qualities."
In Obama's case, you know, soaring rhetoric and so on; in Bush's
case, a nice guy and like to have a beer with him and so on. That's
the kind of thing you focus on. Where do they stand on issues? Well,
the public is mostly uninformed. I haven't seen current polls on
2008, but the 2004 election, where there were polls shortly after,
showed the public had almost no idea what Bush's stand was. In fact,
a majority of Bush voters thought that he supported the Kyoto Protocol,
because they support it, and he's a nice guy, so he must support
it.
And elections are designed that way, and it makes good sense. I
mean, the people who run the elections, they read the polls, and
very carefully, in fact. In fact, they mostly the design them for
their own interest. And they know that the parties are to the right
of the public, so you better—on a large number of issues,
including crucial ones like Iran and others—so you better
keep issues off the table, which is what's done. So what the—healthcare
is a dramatic case of it, but it's only one instance.
AMY GOODMAN: Renowned linguist Noam Chomsky, speaking
to me in Boston last week. We will return to the last part of our
conversation after this break. You can get a copy of the full two
parts by going to democracynow.org. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We return now to the last part of
my conversation with leading American intellectual and anti-imperialist
critic Noam Chomsky.
AMY GOODMAN: The whole issue of populist rage,
Noam Chomsky, actually, do you think that this rage is going to
boil over as the unemployment figures rise?
NOAM CHOMSKY: It's very hard to predict those things.
I mean, it has a potentially positive side, like it could be like
the activism of the 1930s or the 1960s, which ended up making it
a more civilized society in many ways, or it could be like an unfortunate
precedent that quickly comes to mind. I've written about it.
Take a look at Germany. In the 1920s, Germany was the absolute peak
of Western civilization, in the arts and the sciences. It was regarded
as a model of democracy and so on. I mean, ten years later, it was
the depths of barbarism. That was a quick transition. "The
descent into barbarism" it's sometimes called in the scholarly
literature.
Now, if you listen to early Nazi propaganda, you know, end of the
Weimar Republic and so on, and you listen to talk radio in the United
States, which I often do—it's interesting—there's a
resemblance. And in both cases, you have a lot of demagogues appealing
to people with real grievances.
Grievances aren't invented. I mean, for the American population,
the last thirty years have been some of the worst in economic history.
It's a rich country, but real wages have stagnated or declined,
working hours have shot up, benefits have gone down, and people
are in real trouble and now in very real trouble after the bubbles
burst. And they're angry. And they want to know, "What happened
to me? You know, I'm a hard-working, white, God-fearing American.
You know, how come this is happening to me?"
That's pretty much the Nazi appeal. The grievances were real. And
one of the possibilities is what Rush Limbaugh tells you: "Well,
it's happening to you because of those bad guys out there."
OK, in the Nazi case, it was the Jews and the Bolsheviks. Here,
it's the rich Democrats who run Wall Street and run the media and
give everything away to illegal immigrants, and so on and so forth.
It sort of peaked during the Sarah Palin period. And it's kind of
interesting. It's been pointed out that of all the candidates, Sarah
Palin is the only one who used the phrase "working class."
She was talking to the working people. And yeah, they're the ones
who are suffering. So, there are models that are not very attractive.
AMY GOODMAN: And she very much is being talked
about as a leader, really, of the Republican Party.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, she was kind of a model. You
know, the talk radio mob went crazy over her. And one shouldn't
demean it. You know, they describe themselves—it's really
worth listening to: "We're fly-by country. You know, they don't
care about us, those rich Democrats on the East Coast and the West
Coast who are all, you know, interested in gay rights and giving
things away to illegal immigrants and so on. They don't care about
us, the hard-working, God-fearing people, so we've got to somehow
rise up and take over and elect Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh or
someone like that."
As I say, the precedents are not attractive. Now, if—now even
before the next presidential, if in the next congressional election
the economy has not begun to recover, this kind of populist rage
could boil over and could have very dangerous consequences. This
country has a long history of being kind of ridden by fear. It's
a very frightened country. This goes back to colonial times.
I mean, we're very lucky that we have never had an honest demagogue.
I mean, the demagogues we've had are so corrupt that they never
got anywhere—you know, Nixon, McCarthy, you know, Jimmy Swaggart
and others. So they were kind of destroyed by their own corruption.
But suppose we had an honest demagogue, you know, a Hitler type,
who was not corrupt. There's probably—it could be unpleasant.
There's a background of concern and fear, tremendous fear, and searching
for some answer, which they're not getting from the establishment.
"Who's responsible for my plight?" You know, and that
can be exploited. And unless there's active, effective organizing
and education, it's dangerous.
AMY GOODMAN: Your assessment of President Obama
so far?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Frankly, I never had any expectations.
I wrote about it over a year ago. I thought then, and I think it's
been confirmed, that he's essentially a centrist Democrat. He's
moving back—I mean, the Bush administration was kind of off
the spectrum, especially the first term. So he's moving things back
toward the center with a kind of a public posture, which was recognized
by the advertising industry. That's why they gave him the award
for best marketing campaign, which—but as far as policy is
concerned, unless he's under a lot of pressure from activist sectors,
he's not going to go beyond what he's presented himself as in actual
policy statements or cabinet choices and so on: a centrist Democrat,
going to basically continue Bush's policies, maybe in a more modulated
way.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see Afghanistan becoming an
ever-expanded war in the next decade or so? Do you—now we're
talking about doubling the US troops there.
NOAM CHOMSKY: No, that's the way Obama and the
Pentagon see it. In fact, they say so: this is going to be a long
war, it's going to be extended, the US is going to take over the
military side, and it's going to expand it, it's going to expand
into Pakistan. And, I mean, we'll talk about development, but the
focus will be on the military. Obama, right now, is trying to get
NATO to cooperate, but recognizing that they're not going to send
military forces. The populations are opposed.
AMY GOODMAN: Canada is pulling out.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, Canada's pulling out, and the others—maybe
Holland has made a termination date, but we'll at least ask them
to come in and sort of help out on the civilian side. That's their
job. It's the famous line of, I guess it was Robert Kagan: you know,
"they're Venus, we're Mars." So we'll move in like Mars
and take care of the military side. You know, we're good at killing
people. And they can come in and sort of put on the band-aids and
make it look like something good is happening. It's not the right
direction.
AMY GOODMAN: The unmanned drones bombing Pakistan?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, drones. And that has effects.
So a lot of the worst fighting recently has been in the Bajaur province,
right on the border. It's in Pakistan's side. And militants in the
area have reported to the press that part of the reason is that
an American drone attack hit a madrasa, a school, and killed about
eighty people. Well, you know, they're "uncivilized barbarians";
they sort of don't like that. So they reacted. And now, one of the
militants has said, "OK, we're going to bomb the White House,"
which is considered totally outrageous. But, you know, if we kill
as we like, there's going to be a reaction.
AMY GOODMAN: Where do you see American empire in
ten, twenty, thirty years?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Prediction in human affairs is a
very low—has very little success, too many complications.
The United States, I think, will come out of the economic crisis,
very likely, as the dominant superpower. There's a lot of talk about
China and India, and it's real, they're changing, but they're just
not in the same league. I mean, both China and India have enormous
internal problems that the West doesn't face.
You get kind of a picture of this by looking at the Human Development
Index of the United Nations. The last time I looked, India was about
125th or something. And I think China was about eightieth. And China
would be worse, I think, if it wasn't such a closed society. In
India, you sort of get better data, so you can see what's happening.
China is kind of closed. You don't see what's going on in the peasant
areas, which are in turmoil, you know. They have environmental problems.
They have huge—hundreds of millions of people are kind of
like at the edge of starvation.
We don't have—you know, we have problems, but not those problems.
And even the industrial growth, which is there—you know, for
part of the population, there's been improvement. But when you take,
say, India, where we know more, in the areas where high-tech industries
developed—and it's pretty impressive. I've visited some of
the labs in Hyderabad. You know, it's as good or better than MIT.
But right nearby, the rate of peasant suicides is going up, very
sharply, in fact. And it's the same source. It's the neoliberal
policies, which privilege a certain sector of the population and
a certain—and let the rest take care of themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, the rise of progressives
in Latin America?
NOAM CHOMSKY: That's important. I mean, Latin America,
for the first time in 500 years, is moving towards a degree of independence
and a kind of integration, which is a prerequisite for independence,
and also at least is beginning to face some of its massive internal
problems. I mean, Latin America has probably the worst inequality
in the world. There's a wealthy sector, small wealthy sector, which
is extremely rich, but they have—their tradition is that they
have no responsibility to the country, so they send their capital
to Zurich. You know, they have their second homes in the Riviera,
and their children study in Oxford or whatever. This is beginning
to be faced in different ways, but it's sort of happening all over
the continent. And they are beginning to integrate. The United States
obviously doesn't like it. In fact, it's barely reported most of
the time.
So there was a very interesting case last September, when President
Morales in Bolivia—Bolivia is, in my opinion at least, probably
the most democratic country in the world. Nobody says that, but
if you look at what happened in the last couple of years, there
were huge, popular, mass organizations of the most repressed population
in the hemisphere, the indigenous population, which for the first
time ever has entered the political arena significantly and were
able to elect a president from their own ranks and one who doesn't
give instructions to his army, but who's following policies that
were largely produced by the population. So he's their representative,
in a sense in which democracy is supposed to work.
And they know the issues. It's not like our elections. They know
the issues. They're serious issues: control over resources, economic
justice, cultural rights, and so on. You can say they're right or
wrong, but at least it's functioning.
Now, the elites that have traditionally ruled the country, of course,
don't like it. And they're threatening virtual secession. And, of
course, the United States is backing them, as the media are. And
it got to the point last summer, I suppose, where it led to real
violence.
Well, there was a meeting of UNASUR, the Union of South American
Republics—that's all of South America—a meeting in Chile,
Santiago, Chile. And it came out with a declaration, important declaration,
in which it supported President Morales and opposed the—condemned
the violence being led by the quasi-secessionist forces. And Morales
responded, thanking them for their gesture of support, but also
saying, correctly, that this is the first time in 500 years that
South America is beginning to take its affairs in its own hands
without the intervention of foreign powers, primarily the US.
Well, that was so important that I don't think it was even reported
here. I mean, the meeting was known, so you see vague references
to it. But it's an indication of developments that are taking place
in various ways.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, you've just hit eighty. We just
have a few minutes to go. And how does it feel?
NOAM CHOMSKY: I have a few years to go. I don't think about
it much.
AMY GOODMAN: But as you reflect, talking about these huge
social movements, cataclysmic times in the world, your life experience,
what gives you hope?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, there's both hope and fear. I mean,
I'm old enough to have grown up in the Depression. And some of my
memories—I didn't understand that much at the time—childhood
memories, are listening to Hitler's speeches. I didn't understand
them, but I could sense the reaction of my parents, you know, and
had a feeling of fear, you know, a tremendous fear. In fact, the
first article I wrote was in 1939, when I was in fourth grade, and
it was about the expansion of fascism over Europe, a kind of a dark
cloud that may envelop everything. And as I mentioned before, I
have some of those same concerns now.
On the other hand, there's been tremendous progress. The country
is far more civilized than it was, say, forty years ago, thanks
to the activism of the '60s and its aftermath. And some of the most
important developments were after the '60s, like, say, the feminist
movement, which has probably had more of an impact on this society
than any other. It's mostly post-'60s. The solidarity movements,
which are unique in the history of imperialism, there's never been
anything like them. That's from the '80s. The global justice movements,
what's called anti-globalization—shouldn't be—that's,
you know, the '90s and this century. These were all very positive
developments.
They haven't changed the institutions. In fact, the institutions
have reacted by becoming harsher, not surprisingly. But they've
changed the culture. I mean, take, say, the 2008 election. I mean,
I didn't like the candidates, as I've made clear. On the other hand,
forty years ago, or maybe ten years ago, you couldn't have imagined
that the Democratic Party would have two candidates, an African
American and a woman. OK, that's a sign of the civilizing effect
of the activism of the '60s and everything that followed.
Well, that can be mobilized. In fact, it's already. If you count
the number of activists in the country, it's, I suspect, well beyond
the '60s, except maybe for a very brief moment at the peak of the
antiwar movement. OK, that can be a basis for proceeding onward.
So, that's a reason for hope.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, our condolences on the
loss of Carol.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Thanks.
AMY GOODMAN: Your life partner, someone you knew—well,
you're eighty—what, for seventy-seven years?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, actually. Not easy to face.
AMY GOODMAN: What gives you the strength to go on after
Carol?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the kind of thing you do, for example.
That makes a difference.
AMY GOODMAN: And you have a wonderful family.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: So, our condolences to you—
NOAM CHOMSKY: Thanks.
AMY GOODMAN: —and your kids. Noam Chomsky, thanks
so much.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Thanks.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at MIT, leading
public intellectual of our day. If you'd like to get a copy of the
full interview, part one and today's part two, with Noam Chomsky,
you can go to our website at democracynow.org.
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